


Barbarian's Desire

by knaval



Category: IPB, Ice Planet Barbarians
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:14:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23073793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knaval/pseuds/knaval
Summary: Khuis have always resonated in pairs... but what if only one half of a mated pair resonated to the other?fanfic for ruby dixon's ice planet barbarian series featuring some oc's, fawn and rhaol. takes place around book 6 maybe ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Comments: 5
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

###  KIRA.

“How’s it going?” I ask as I enter the crashed alien ship. Inside, Harlow is hunched over by the wall full of the old pods, the section near her becoming slowly disemboweled as she scavenges for useful parts. It seemed like a good idea to cannibalize the alien ships that were further away from the main cave while neither of us was heavily pregnant.

Harlow shrugs, not turning away from her work prying a small metal piece out with a bone knife. “Slowly. It’s hard to tell what’s going to be useful without the Elder’s Cave computer giving me schematics of what to look for. And these aliens don’t exactly use screws to attach everything. But then again I didn’t bring a phillips-head with me.”

“Guess you’re screwed,” I offer quietly. 

Harlow snorts, and then we continue in silence for a while. I find a ledge to sit on and wait.

I’m only here to translate the writing and labels on the alien ship. Sadly that takes much less time than it does for her to pry the parts out. The parts are far too delicate for anyone who doesn’t know what they’re doing to interfere with. 

With nothing to do until Harlow needs something read, I think about how I miss Kae dreadfully. I know Harlow must miss her baby too, but at least she has the work to keep her preoccupied. At least we didn’t come out here all alone. Outside, our mates stand watch around a fire. They don’t like to linger inside the alien ship, and after checking that there were no animals making a nest inside, set up a camp in a nearby cave. Aehako tries to make conversation with Rukh every few minutes, but Rukh still isn’t much for talking. He’s still working to regain his grasp on the Sa-khui language, but he also doesn’t seem to like anyone all that much besides Harlow. Still, Aehako was close friends with Raahosh, who was not much of a chatty Cathy either and they still got along. Maybe it will just take a little while. I try not to think about how I want to go out there and join them, if only to hold Aehako and miss our Kae. I just did that a minute ago, until it got too cold for me to stay out in the wind.

I shiver, but not from the cold of the ice planet for once. Rather, the memories of the last time I was in this ship, captured by the little green men and their large orange body guards. The ship is a bit lighter with a hole ripped in it, but the eerie way the little lights blink on and off in the stand-by mode, and the whirr of the computers gnaws at me. Harlow was one of the pod-encapsulated girls from the cargo bay. She hadn’t experienced the two weeks of huddling for warmth and safety while we starved in these horrid ships. I guess that’s why she can stand to take them apart for hours on end and I can only manage a few minutes at a time. 

Harlow taps the glass of one of the pods with the red light on it. Unlike some of the other red-light pods, it’s not totally shattered, only a thin crack in the class. 

I peak a glance at the pods. I try not to look at them, because I’ll think about the girls I unknowingly condemned when I crashed the ship to escape. It’s one of the things I still have nightmares about. 

“This one’s still humming,” she frowns. She looks around the display panel, which has frosted over, and frowns. 

“Are you sure that’s not just the rest of the ship?”

Harlow shakes her head and presses her head to the glass. She beckons me over, and I swallow hard before I inch next to her.

“What’s this here?” she says, pointing to a few buttons next to a divot. 

Even without reading the label, I know it from when we rescued other girls. 

“It’s the release hatch.”

Harlow reaches for it.

“Wait! The body in there could be rotting or something, it’ll smell awful--”

Harlow doesn’t wait though, she pushes in the release and pulls open the door. I cover my nose and skitter backwards as a gust of steam pulls through the opening door. 

There’s a body, alright. Another girl. My gut twists. But as the steam clears, she doesn’t look rotten. She doesn’t even look unhealthy. 

“Emergency storage deactivated. Continue with manual dosage of sedatives,” a computer voice blares in the alien language. I translate as much to Harlow. The words don’t register meaning in my head though, as months of nightmares come to realization: we left someone behind. 

Harlow moves to catch the girl as she slumps out of the pod, and shouts. I’m unable to move except shrink back against a wall as our mates bound into the ship and Ruhk takes the girl from Harlow’s arms.

Plans change with barely a word. The look that gets passed between all of us, what we all know from the times this has happened before: we have to take her back to the Tribal Cave. 

Harlow packs up her cannibalized parts and checks all the pods thoroughly this time. There’s only sludge left in the last two containers, but I didn’t stay in the ship to look. 

The trek back to the cavern was a lot harder than we thought it would be. I think at worst we assumed each of us might have to shoulder a bag full of parts, but nothing bulky. Harlow tends to focus on bringing back small circuitry type things, never full metal panels. But a whole other body, even a tiny human, is more than planned. Especially one that can’t walk by herself. 

Aehako carries the girl, Harlow carries the ship parts and sometimes Ruhk carries Harlow. Whenever he does Aehako casts me doleful looks that seem to say he wishes he could be picking me up when I start struggling with the snow drifts.

We travel all day and stop for the night in a cave. Little of it registers. I can’t stop staring at her. Tears well up and threaten to freeze every time I do but I can’t help it. I crashed that ship. I left her there. I would have left her there again. 

Aehako rubs my back in calming motions, no doubt seeing the worry on my face. 

“Why does she sleep?” Ruhk says with a gesture to the girl, and it’s the first thing all day that jarrs me out of my head. 

I adjust the furs around my shoulders. Aehako must have put them there when I was too wrapped up in my thoughts to notice. I squeeze his hand. He’s so thoughtful, my mate. 

“You’re pretty catatonic yourself,” Harlow says to me. “You doing alright?”

“F-fine. Just worried. Um,” I stammer out. I don’t want them to fuss over me. Not when we have this girl to worry over. “The alien ship computer, it said something about a sedative. I guess it must have knocked her out for the um…”

Storage. God, what an awful word for it. It makes me sick to my stomach to even think about saying it out loud. 

The others nod, however, understanding. I don’t have to finish my sentence. 

I know when we bring this girl back and give her a khui there will celebration at another human, another possible mate for the hunters. But to me, all I can see is yet another girl who didn’t have a choice about being stolen away from her home. Another girl who had years taken from her. Another girl who is going to have to adjust to living on this brutal ice planet. 

“These walls are beautiful,” Harlow says after a minute, and probably to change the subject. 

I look up to see what she’s talking about. I hadn’t even noticed that the walls were painted with cave paintings. Similar to the ones we learned about in archaeology classes in school. But instead of painted bison, there’s painted dvisti and metlaks and scythe-beaks, all kinds of animals etched in charcoal and pigments from smeared plants.

I’ve honestly never seen any other caves painted like this. It is beautiful, and between the firelight and the texture on the cavern wall, the paintings almost seem to move. I wonder if they tell a story. 

A strange expression crosses Aehako’s face. “Oh.”

“Oh?” Harlow repeats, raising an eyebrow. 

He ducks his head. “I know who painted them. I simply had not thought about him in many moons. Several seasons, actually.”

“One of the hunters?” I ask, though I don’t think it could be.

“Rhaol. He was a hunter, a bit older than me, but you would not have met him.”

There’s a sad sort of distant look in his eyes then. I don’t know anyone in the caves of that name, and there’s only a couple options for that. I lean my head against his shoulder and put an arm around him. “Did the khui sickness take him?”

Aehako shakes his head. “No, er. I think it took his his family though. He never resonated with anyone so he just left to wander the wilds. Every season or two he would return for a few nights and leave us with things he found from far away. He used to paint the travel caves he stayed in until they were fully covered, and then he would move on. That’s how you would know if he had been in the area. But I have not seen his paintings for several seasons now.”

There’s an unspoken thought that hangs over the cave, that something must have eaten him. 

“But there’s still this painting, so maybe he’s around these parts,” Harlow suggests with a touch of optimism. “It’s so easy to get lost and turned around on Not-Hoth. Maybe he was just extra lost for a while.”

Ruhk puts a hand on her shoulder to stop her from suggesting any more, and shakes his head slightly. 

Aehako attempts a smile, but there’s still sadness in it. “The paintings do not fade much over the years. Sometimes the metlaks smear them, but most often I have seen them last tens of seasons.”

Around then I unroll my furs and tuck myself in. I know he will join me soon. I wish desperately that I was in a better state to comfort him about realizing Rhaol probably passed away. But I’m very aware if I extend myself out just the slightest, I will probably burst into tears and be useless in getting us back home. 

So I hold it in. 


	2. Chapter 2

###  RHAOL.

I have been tracking these footprints for three days now. It is cold and I have barely slept in as many days, but I will track them to the ends of the earth if I must.

I recognize only half of the footprints in the snow. Two are obviously Sa-Khui, with their large foot shape and the occasional tail mark against the snow. Then there’s snow churned up in something indiscernible between the Sa-Khui footprints. Sometimes half the churned snow disappears on one side, even more strangely. I suppose if it is a kit, kicking up the snow they would be carried every now and then. The tracks are only a day or so old though, and I am not far behind now.

All I know is that in the middle of the night, I heard movements. I had thought it to be an animal, a herd of dvisti I could ignore. But then my chest, my heart, began to pound, like fear at first, then apprehension. After an hour or so, it quieted down again. 

It took me several moments to realize it was resonance. By then the noises had moved on over the crest of the mountain. I could tell by their tracks that they were hiking quickly, desperately trying to reach their destination. But it did not seem to me that there were any creatures pursuing them. All of it confuses me, but I know I will find my answers at the end of this trail. 

Half of me hopes the tracks will lead me back to the Tribal Cave. There is nothing there for me there, but the place itself is good for finding my bearings. For a few seasons now, I have become unable to remember the way home, or even find familiar territory. It will be good to unload all the strange plants and things I have collected in my travels. 

Regardless of where these tracks are taking me, I follow them because I need to know who it is that I resonated to. I need to find my mate, even if none of the possibilities are good.

There were so few women left when I departed. Resonance had simply not been an option. Did someone lose a mate? Was there another khui sickness that demanded new khuis be put in? I vaguely recall it happened to one tribe member, but I do not recall if he survived long after. 

It disturbs me to suppose that I have been gone so long that a kit had aged enough to resonate, and that as mates we would be so distant in age. That my khui, that which has kept me warm and strong and healthy all these years, would betray me with something that leaves a foul taste in my mouth. 

Of all these things I am expecting, it is not what I find.

Ahead of me as I crest a familiar mountain, I can see the tracks leading down to a place I did not know if I would ever see again, the Tribal Caves. There are more tracks however, leading not very far from the caves, back out into the icy landscape. The thrum in my chest has returned, and I feel it must mean I am getting closer to my mate.

Up ahead, a group of hunters are fighting a sa-kohtsk. Suddenly it is not only my khui pounding my chest, but my heart as well. What if my mate is over there? What if they are in danger?

Before I realize it I am running over the plane to the fight. I cannot let the possibility that my mate could be hurt in this scuffle come to pass. I drop my pack in the snow and grip my spear, watching as a few young hunters fail to pierce the shaggy mane of the animal.

I charge in with a snarl, bursting out of the pink wispy trees. The sa-kohtsk picks this unfortunate moment to turn and my spear glances off its side. Another hunter is trying to unstick his spear from it to stab the beast again.

I roll underneath it, its feet narrowly missing the chance to crush my middle in half. The hunters yell out in surprise at my arrival, but the sound is soon drowned out by the beast screaming its last sound when my spear is thrust up into its belly.

Lucky for me it tries to roll off the spear onto its side, and does not crush down upon me.

I stagger out from under the beast as it bleeds the snow red, and I am winded. In a moment I will get up and greet the familiar faces. First I must look upon my mate, and see who it is. I would have wandered this in wasteland alone forever, but now I cannot wait another moment to know.

"Rhaol!" Haedan calls to me, clapping a hand over my shoulder. Vektal is nearby, and he pulls me into a fierce hug.

"I do not recall inviting you on the hunt," he smiles as he pulls away.

"Good thing I was passing through, you might have taken another hour with your prey," I return, but the humor of the comment does not feel genuine. I am too distracted to even properly greet my old friend.

I wipe some of the blood off my face and when I am not breathing so heavily, the thrum of my khui can be heard by all who stand nearby. 

The smile drops from his face to surprise. "You're… resonating!" 

Then Vektal, my chief is smiling all new again. I did not expect him to be happy for me. With so few women in the tribe when I left, and so many unmated males, I would imagine there to be a lot of resentment and jealousy over a resonance. Yet another reason to be uneasy about coming back.

"Who… who is it?" I ask. I cannot hear another person resonating on the hill, and this disturbs me.

My heart clutches when I see a sled being dragged up to the slayed creature, and a bundle of wrapped furs upon it. My thoughts jump to the worst. More khui sickness? Have I resonated only just for my mate to be taken away just as quickly?

Someone slices open the sa-kohtsk's belly as the bundled person comes into view and it is no one, nothing I know. Her features are flat and white, a sprinkle of tan dots run over her little nose. Wisps of her mane, light brown and wavy, curl around her face.

I fall to my knees and touch her cheek. She is at the same time more beautiful than I ever could have dreamed, and in the same, stranger than anything I have seen. She is like me, and so unlike me all in the same. Her perfect little mouth, pink and tinged with blue, is open slightly and I can see how her teeth are square and dull. 

Vektal is saying something as he stands above us. I barely hear him. 

"She needs a khui," he repeats for me when he realizes I haven't been listening.

"The sickness?" I ask, though that cannot explain her. She isn't resonating, and I am not entirely sure she is breathing either.

He shrugs. "It is a long story. I will explain at home. First, your mate."

He hands me the bone knife, but my hands tremble in an uncertain way they have not done since I was a kit. I cannot do it. I cannot think to mar any part of her.

Vektal nods and takes the knife back to make a small slice on the side of her neck. My stomach turns at the blood. Blood has never made me uneasy. But it is  _ her _ blood.

He hands me the beast heart, crawling with khui. I pluck one and press it to her neck. Soon enough the blue strand worms inside the cut, and when its end disappears entirely, she takes in a loud gasp of a breath.

My fists curl around her furs. But she doesnt open her eyes. She doesn't make a sound after that. I sit there watching her for any noise after for several moments, but there are none.

"She needs to heal first. Then she will resonate. I have seen this before with several of her kind," Haedan offers to me quietly.

I nod and stand. There were many like her? Many sick? I look to Vektal. That long story, then.

Another hunter has gone to retrieve my discarded pack, and we all begin to return to the cave.

Inside the tribal cave, there are many more like my mate. It is startling to see. Many are heavy with child and some even nurse new kits. It is good to see the caves bursting with life again, but it was not what I expected to see.

Two hunters pick up the sled my soundless mate is on and carry her to Maylak, talking about healing and such. Everyone stares and whispers with interest as my mate passes by. The ones I dont know stare at me too, while the ones of the old tribe wave a greeting.

Then my mate is taken away into a cave. I freeze. I wish to go after her, but I have many duties to the tribe first. Greetings and speaking with the chief. 

Vektal gestures for me to follow him to his cave. Another one of these strange beings stands in the entrance of his cave, also holding an impossibly tiny kit.

"Now we will explain."

...

The story was as long as he said it would be. Partly because his mate interrupted constantly to add in many details and answer questions I did not ask.

I try not to stare at Vektals new mate. It would be rude. But she looks so strange to me. The way she speaks does not fully grasp the sakhui language. She says many things that seem nonsensical. I cross my arms over my chest. She is warm and I am not sure if I like her, but it is not for me to like her. She is the chiefs mate and I will be respectful of her regardless.

The story of the humans confuses me. I have traveled further than anyone in my tribe and not found these people before. I do not understand how they could suddenly come to be here, but there is no debating their existence, or their place in the tribe. A lot has happened since I was last here, and it is I who will have to adjust. I brace my emotions, and hope to find the same discipline for them now as when I lose a whole pack of discovered plants and supplies to dangerous exploration. There is loss of what I have known and gathered, and then as always I will start to gather again. There is nothing else I can do.

Georgie appears at my elbow as Vektal is summoned to deal with a dispute outside in the main cavern. She smiles with dimples up at me and points to markings on my arm.

"Did you do these tattoos yourself?"

"I… yes," I nod, if only to cut the conversation short. The needled markings were a technique passed down from from my father, and one I have perfected in the many spare hours I have wandered caves alone. Most of the tribe think them silly and more trouble than they are worth, since they take many long hours of sitting still, sticking a sharp nettle shallowly into the skin when it is covered in the hues of a crushed plant. I prefer the fronds of the pink sashrem tree. Their surprisingly dark ink penetrates far deeper than other plants, and does not fade easily in a few years as some do. It has a slight, unpleasant numbing affect, but when sticking oneself repeatedly with a nettle to tear up flesh it is better than if it caused a rash.

I role the word over in my mouth a few times. Tattoo. Tattoo. Tattoo. I have never had a name for them, but the sharp way the humans have on their sounds seems fitting.

Georgie is still staring up at me. I try to shoe her away, like the birds that creep too close to me by streams. She continues to stare, and a grin creeps up on her face.

"I hear you resonated the moment you got back," she says, bouncing on her little feet. "Congrats."

I nod and try to shoe her away again, but she catches my hand and, horrors, she has five fingers. She shakes my hand around as if it were her own to do so.

"So? Who was it?"

"I do not know. She is still asleep. She only just received a khui."

"Oh the new girl? I cant wait to meet her. I'm sure we're going to be good friends. Are you are planning to stay? You must!" She seems to realize what shes saying and pulls herself back. "Oh, forgive me for putting you on the spot. You can decide things with her when she wakes up. I'm just so excited."

A wailing starts in the corner and she hurried to an oddly shaped basket full of furs, and a baby. Too small to be a sakhui baby. She immediately goes over to it to coo and fuss, so I take the opportunity in her distraction to leave.

I step out of the cave and ignore the looks of strangers as I try to step around the small humans, who are practically underfoot. I follow the beating of my khui to a cave further back, where it is quieter and out of the way.

Inside in the middle of the floor there is a bed of furs that my mate is laid out in her bundle upon. Beside her is a sakhui woman, who after a moment, I realize is Maylak. I left shortly after she mated, and she has aged quite a bit since. Her eyes look tired, but always welcoming. 

Behind me, another human brushes into the room. Always another human, it seems.

"Maylak is taking care of her, and now that she has a khui she'll be able to tell you how shes doing," the human says. with bright red hair. She has similar speckles on her face to the ones my mates has, but many many more.

I stare at her. I do not know why she is here or what she wants, but I cannot think of a kind was to ask her to leave. I am very close to considering taking my mate up in my arms and returning to the trails again. If she were not unwell I would do it in an instant. 

After a moment a wry smile touches the ginger humans face.

"I was with the group that found her and brought her back," she says.

Immediately I regret my rudeness. Without this woman I would never have had the chance to resonate. I nod. "I am grateful."

I am more than grateful, I am indebted. I need to show her my thanks, but the first thing that springs to mind, hunting, will not do. Her mate would likely not appreciate me offering her fresh kills. It is something of an overture, if I remember correctly. 

The stray thought that I will not remember enough of my people's customs of proper care for a mate panics me, but I do not have time this moment to worry over it.

When I spy my pack in the corner, I hold up a hand and go to it. After a few moments of rifling through it, I find something somewhat suitable. It is not enough to convey the eternal gratefulness I will have towards her and the others of that group, but it is a start.

I take her hand and press the volcanic glass into her palm. It has been polished by the sea, but has little use by me. 

She looks up at me and I nod to her. A look of understanding crosses her face. She smiles and takes it with her as she leaves.

There is a lot remaining in my pack that I have collected these past years, most of which I will part with in these caves. I have always doled out my findings to whomever will take them here. 

Maylak stands, setting aside my mate's hand. Before I can even ask, she says, "I will return this evening. For now, all we can do is make sure she is comfortable. Spoon bits of meat broth to her and make sure she is warm. The humans are easily cold."

"She does not resonate," I say, and Maylak waves a hand as if this is unimportant.

"Several of the humans took a while to resonate. Most of those were injured in one way or another."

It cracks my heart in several places to think that my mate, out in this world so inhospitable to her, would be injured before I knew the need to protect her. So much of the wandering I did seems like time wasted, when I should have been moving in her direction. Finding her, keeping her safe. It is a fruitless path of thoughts to indulge, but if I do not think them my khui spouts them throughout my mind regardless.

Maylak stops in the doorway, holding open the leather flap that gives privacy to the cave. "You might consider giving her a wash. It has likely been a season since she had one, if the humans are correct. And the humans seem to enjoy being clean."

With that, she leaves and drops the leather flap to cover the doorway. 

For the first time, my mate and I are alone together.

I sink to my knees beside her. I touch her face and she does not stir. 

Our bodies are just inches apart, but there is a longing in me as if she were hundreds of days travel away. I do not understand how I could miss someone I never met, but the emotion blooms and bleeds against my ribs.

I do not know her at all. There is no voice, no expression from her face to think of her with. 

What sort of person will she be? What if we are like Raahosh's parents, always bickering and fighting and at odds with one another? For every handful of happily mated couples I think of the one that would rather be alone and separate for all eternity than bound to one another.

I am hoping against everything that my luck will not be such as them.

Methodically I begin to untie the leather cords that have bundled her up, all except her face. After a few more knots, the furs fall away, and I choke. She is wearing exceedingly little beneath them. I wonder if this is why the humans are so often cold.

The base of my horns flush with heat and I have to look away for several minutes as my khui competes with my heart for breaking my chest open. When I cannot stand it any longer I busy myself around the rest of the cave.

I light a fire and boil meat scraps over it for broth. I am tempted to try to push tiny cuts of meat into my mates mouth to see if she will swallow them, but fight the urge. Maylak said broth. She would know best.

Finally I return to kneel by my mate, and when I cant find the ties for the odd textured clothing she wears, I cut it off with a bone knife. 

The room they have placed us used to be a storage room. There are still many furs and baskets folded up here, and I suspect we shall be in use of them I stack the furs high and wide until the ground cannot be felt through them and the bed has plenty of space for the both of us. It takes up the majority of one corner. 

In another corner Georgie had described in her long explanations, that Harlow had broken part of the wall with her strange tools. Behind that wall was an underground river, another untapped hot spring. Thankfully there was another cavern beneath this one, and with an equally sized hole the water passed through without flooding our cavern. A wide basin had been carved lower into the floor to gather and contain any water that passed through. 

When deciding where to put us, the chief and his mate had reasoned that since the new girl needed washing and tending, that it would be better to have those things away from the main cavern view. Georgie had pointed out in her long, winding explanation that my mate would still have earths sensibilities about privacy, after all. Whatever those were.

I carry my mate over and lay her in the basin, making sure not to let her head be too close to the water. Then with a small worn leather and a crushed handful of soap berries I begin to wash her. 

My cock stirs in my leggings from touching her. I try to look away as I do it, but the softness of her skin is a powerful sensation.

This seems to be as good a time as any to stew over my worries. I take care to consider each of them to their fullest, and worst possibilities in an effort to keep my cock down. It is not the time for carnal wants, when she is healing. 

When I am done combing through her hair, full of tawny waves, I wring the water from it and lay her down across the bed of furs. I place a fur or two atop her for warmth. I have no new clothes for her to wear. 

It is then I see a small marking that mars her skin over the inside of her wrist. It is similar to the ones I have, and I feel a strange sort of kinship with this human. It is the first moment I feel my khui has chosen right, and I am unafraid of the sort of person she will be when she wakes.

But my mate, she does not wake.

I leave on several hunts with the tribe, and each time I return fearing she has woken without me, and in the same thought worrying she still will not have woken. I am never sure which would be worse. 

I tell her stories of my travels, and pretend she listens. Often I do this as I paint our cave walls with pictures of the animals I have seen. Sometimes they are the same senseless designs that wind around my arms in tattoos. I fill our home with all the little things of living, baskets and furs and feathers and string and bones for making new tools. They mostly sit in baskets and wait to be used. I try not to think about how I also wait to be used.

Every day I spoon her broth. I wash her and lay her in the bed to dry. I comb and braid her hair sometimes. I bring back catches from my hunts and eat alone. The sound of my khui echoes off the painted walls.

I do not sleep inside with her. I yearn to lay in the same bed, to put my head against her chest in anticipation of when her khui will answer mine, but I know it is a trap. If I do that I might never leave her side, not even to eat. Her survival depends on me to not do that.

Instead I sit outside our cave and sleep next to the doorway. Josie has made the same joke about a thing called a guard dog at least twice a day, every day.

Many days, I barter with the ceiling. I glare at the patches I cannot reach to paint, and tell them how I would do anything if it would wake my mate today. 


	3. Chapter 3

###  FAWN.

It's dark, I'm alone. My alarm hasn't gone off yet. My back is a bit stiff and I'm weirdly horny. 

I feel like I've been having a fever dream. It's all stressful and none of it makes sense. Thank god I can't remember any of it once my eyes flutter open in the dark. 

It's really hot in here. Dammit if the power went out and my fan stopped and my alarm went off I'm going to scream. But sleepy me is ok with pretending that hasn't happened yet again, and going back to sleep without checking for it. I'm so tired I could just try to sleep forever.

I kick off the covers for the heat but roll over onto my side to burrow my head against my pillow. It helps with the heat but it does nothing for the need to touch myself. 

Hang on, wasn't I wearing pajamas? 

Whatever, I live alone. 

I reach a hand down to touch myself and it's odd but I swear I just shaved everything yesterday for that atrocious date. But there's considerable growth. Weird.

I must still be dreaming. I do feel kind of woozy and dizzy but I go ahead stroking myself. I hiss, more sensitive than usual. I'm really wet, its practically a mess but I cant even begin to think about the laundry I'll need to do after, every touch making me need to bite my lip. 

Maybe its a weird sexy dream. Wonder if it's the ambien. Its usually a much slower and more tedious process to get me to this point. I'll come in seconds at this rate.

My eyes are beginning to adjust to the dark, and… it doesn't look like my room. It's not my bed, but like a pile of fur. I'm not sure the ambien has ever made me see this before, though. I blink in the dark, waiting for concern to kick in. My sense of self preservation had never been good, but I would hope it would not abandon me completely in an hour of need. 

Of course, I’m a bit distracted with a very different kind of need. 

Pleasure grips my body with tension and I can't stop stroking, not even when a curtain is pulled aside and something, someone comes in. He's terrifying, towering as he stands to his full height after ducking through the doorway. He stills the moment he sees me. 

He's… blue? Christ. With horns, and a tail. But he's also entirely bound in muscle and an unreal number of abs and all he's wearing some soft looking pants that don't do anything to hide the sizable bulge I crane my neck to get a better look at. 

And my fingers don't stop working my clit, not for a second. He watches me, and his gaze sends a shiver over my shoulders. 

It's way past starting to occur to me that I've never had a dream quite like this before. Its too vivid. Too real. But the pleasure that rolls through me is overwhelming.

I bite down on my lip and I'm still not caught up on what's going on exactly as he walks over, each step deliberate and slow. Theres plenty of time to get up and run if I wanted to, but I dont. Whatever blue guy has got going on, I'm all for it, and if I wasn't busy already I'd climb him like a tree.

His silent gaze holds mine as he stops before me. My heart is thudding in my chest. He reaches a hand, only four fingers, and grazes it against my ankle. His touch feels a bit like suede. His glance goes from my ankle back to my eyes. I don't jerk away.

I know exactly what he's asking to do and in this moment I desperately want it. I nodd. 

He kneels down before my spread legs, drawing his touch from my ankle up my leg and inner thigh. I worry my teeth into my lower lip and whimper.

After a moment's hesitation, waiting for me to say no, he presses a thick finger inside me, before dragging it from cunt to clit. He removes the hand, breaking a string of my wetness as he brings it up to his mouth. His dark eyes stare down mine as he draws his tongue over his finger to taste me. I cant help but moan. Feverishly, I nod. I want whatever he's asking to do.

His hands curl around my hips and pull me across the furs to meet his mouth against my sex and I cant help but cry out.

His mouth is so warm, and his hands are so hot against me, gripped around my thighs as he drags his tongue over me, and oh god I am very much here for this.

It doesn't feel like a tongue, I cant quite place what it does feel like. That's hardly more important than the absurdity of this situation. 

His movement against me are greedy and ravenous, tasting everything. My hands find his horns and curl around them to anchor him there because I dont think I ever want him to get up. I want to live in this moment. I cant believe I wanted to go back to bed and miss this. 

He groans and stiffens for a moment, before he shudders. All the while he never stops, his large, hot, ridged tongue working in and out of me between sucking my clit. I try to lift my head to peak up at him. Did he just cum? The thought barely register before a wave of pleasure overtakes me and an orgasm shudders through me, I'm convulsing around his tongue. 

Around this point I would have clicked off my vibrator and been done, but he keeps going, and with my clit sensitive and raw from this touching I'm coming again in moment, hips bucking violently away from his mouth. I have just enough sense to yank up on his horns. All I can do is grasp for air and whimper.

I feel like I can't move now, completely rocked to the core. My grip loosens on my visitor, tall, dark and blue, as he levels a glare across my stomach to me. Then he dips his head back down.

"Don't, don't do that," I manage a whine between huffed breaths. I twitch at even the light touches of his tongue now, and find my foot to prod at his shoulder. That makes him back away.

He moves upward at least, pulling himself parallel on the furs with me. He lies down on his side, his head propped up in his hand, watching me. I'm sure I look mildly horrified, looking back at him.

I dont have questions. Its more of just one question, 'what?' With a thousand question marks after it. Specifically it’s a Window’s 98 error noise. Just repeated over and over. I cant think of how to ask anything more specific, because I can't imagine what the answers could possibly be.

Then, as my breathing calms a bit, he moves a hand up and gingerly places it between my breasts, flat along my sternum. I swallow.

He frowns at me. He presses his hand down a little a few times, like I'm a CPR training dummy. 

He looks disturbed, disgusted even as he pulls away and stands. The expression leaves an odd pang in my chest. I sit up but in a moment he pushes past the leather curtain, leaving me alone again.

Several moments go past and I don't know what to do with myself. I kind of want to just sit here and entertain the idea that I could go back to bed and all this will cease to exist. I'm getting kind of chilly now though, so I pull some of the furs surrounding me over my shoulders.

I've woken up in places I don't remember going to before. I've traveled and forgotten I'd done it many times. I’ve had sex with people minutes into meeting them before. It's just never been complete fantasyland when that happened, and always with regular people. My brain stalls and stutters. Everything I observe or think is met with a flat 'no', but simultaneously refuses to provide another answer for what is going on and who was that anyway.

The leather curtain is flung aside and a small woman dressed in caveman leathers, bouncing a small bluish baby on her hip comes in.

"You're awake!"

For some reason, I scream at seeing a human. I dont know why that's the final straw. Maybe if it had been an endless parade of unexplainable things I would just come to the conclusion I'd had some kind of stroke. Another human grounds this as reality in a way I'm not prepared to deal, because seriously now what the fuck was everything that just happened. 

I cant even finish a single thought. I feel my brain bluescreening on me.

I clap a hand over my mouth when I see the girl look shocked at my reaction and for a brief second I can think like a person that has manners and is considerate of others.

I swallow a couple times.

Somehow I find my voice and stutter until words form. Most of them are useless.

"Um. Hi. Oh, wow. Ok. Hello. Can I like, get some clothes? I don't think I can process anything unless I get some pants," I ramble.

And then the room goes sideways and everything is soft and dark again. 


	4. Chapter 4

###  RHAOL.

Meeting my mate was not as I had planned. On hunts when my mind went to her I would not let myself think too much on what our first meeting with her awake would be like. I had been warned thoroughly that she would need adjusting to this world as if she were a newborn kit.

But hope seeps in through the cracks. I have always had too much hope when I should not. I thought to myself what I would say to her to help make the introduction to this place easier for her. I do not know how not to terrify her.

Her people did not have khui before, and the concept of resonance, or being chosen for one another is very different from the human ways. Liz tells me the humans choose mates for themselves, though they sometimes choose wrong. Many of the mated humans have such stories of how at first they were reluctant to accept their khui's choice. 

This worries me a little. I know my khui has chosen her, but doubt makes itself known in my chest. What if she does not want to be mated to me? Even the thought of such an outcome saddens me deeply. I know soon, as all khuis are paired, she will be my mate regardless. Yet until her khui resonates with mine I will remain uneasy. 

Of course, with all these words and stories to prepare me, I still did not expect the outcome.

When I entered our cave, I truly did not expect her to be awake. When I saw that she was, my first thought was to find the healer. That thought vanished entirely when my khui began to hum. 

All I could do was look at her. And she looked at me, and she did not scream, she did not seem frightened in any way. I was entirely captivated by the shine in her eyes, it was a moment before I realized I had stumbled upon her pleasuring herself. That she invited me to join her after a moment, it was something straight from my dreams. 

Puzzling though, in our afterglow, I noticed her khui was silent. It bothered me so much that I immediately went for the healer. That was my mistake, I should have stayed with her. Pleasured her more. Talked some. Taken care of her myself. It would have been far preferable to waiting outside our cave while others, the humans and the healer, fed and cared for her. Every time i tried to even approach our cave, there was a human there to say I could not yet.

For the next few days, my mate stays inside her cave. Georgie said she tried to explain things to her, but that she did not take it well.

It took a couple times to explain her new situation to her without fainting. Georgie thought it was best if I not bother my mate until she seems more stable.

Fawn, her name. I like the way her name sits in my mouth. I like even better the way other parts of her were against my mouth, but for now, I hunt alone and say it aloud every so often. I bring back a fresh kill and ask a human to take it to her.

From Harlow and Liz, who are allowed to see her, I hear my Fawn has done nothing but lay down and occasionally drink tea. My brow wrinkles as I think of this. Did she not get enough sleep before?

She must be a very fragile thing to need such fretting. It worries me that if I touch her she will break. I do not know how I will manage to keep her safe, but it seems that my life of wandering has come to an end. 

I return to the caves, and am surprised by her yet again.

My Fawn sits clothed in leathers and furs on the edge of the warm pool in the center of the caves, surrounded by the other human women. She smiles and does not look the least bit fragile. 

"The game is 'fuck, marry, kill'," she says. I dont understand the middle word, but otherwise it sounds like a dangerous game. The name sounds like it involves mating and hunting.

"Kill is such a harsh word," Claire says, covering the ears of a baby that is not hers. "Why not change it to kick? It's just a bit gentler."

I lean in the doorway to watch my mate from afar. I am unwilling to disturb the smile on her face. I want to see it for as long as I can. 

"Fine," Fawn sighs, rolling her eyes. "Tell me of all the blue guys in this cave, who you want to fuck, marry, and kick. Georgie, you start."

Georige nods and thinks for a moment. "Fuck and marry Vektal, and… well Hayden pissed me off this morning because he took Josie away while I was talking to her. So I'd give him a kick in shins for that."

The humans around her nods along as if pleased by her answer, but my Fawn shakes her head and frowns.  "You can't name the same person twice, that's not how the game works."

Georgie pouts. "...I dont really want to fuck anyone I'm not mated- er, married to. I cant even picture it."

"I don't think it works here," Liz interrupts. "All of us are already mated, it's kind of a single girls game. Or at least not the kind you play where you pick from your girlfriends' guys. That would be kind of gross."

The other humans nod in agreement, and some break off into their own conversations there, flicking water at one another.

Fawn reluctantly sighs and nods.

"I was just hoping to like, get up to speed on the sort of guys around here now that I'm stuck with y'all," Fawn grumbles. 

Part of me wonders if it would not be simpler to meet everyone and be introduced rather than play this strange game to asses the sort of people they are.

"But you've already got a resonance mate," Josie puts in, and then points to me. It startles me away from the wall I was leaning on.

She looks at me a long moment before she answers. Her voice is low but I can still hear it. "Yeah uh, I dont think we're assigned 'mated' or whatever. Mines not going off."

At that she pushes away from the fountain, taking Josie's arm to lean on to walk back to our cave.

Every part of my body screams for me to scoop her up and carry her wherever she wants to go when it is clear she has not regained the strength for walking. But one thought holds me back. She has not resonated yet. She does not think we are meant to be together.

For several moments, I recount the stories the other mated pairs have told me. How at first they did not seem a good fit. How illness can delay a khui.

I try to reassure myself for many long moments it is only that. But a part of me that speaks not in words, only the prickling in my skin, wonders what will happen if she never resonates for me. 


End file.
